A Laketown Bridge at Midnight
by SelkieShore
Summary: In which Fili overhears something he shouldn't, but which perhaps it was just as well that he did. Fem!Bilbo x Thorin. I would be grateful for guidance on the rating here - there is some smut, it's not graphic, (reluctant) voyeurism and discussion of pregnancy. Also some violence. Rated older Teen for now but if anyone thinks it should be higher let me know and I'll change it.
1. Chapter 1

Fili strode across one of the many bridges of Laketown, his boots drumming on the wood. Behind him, light and music blazed from the hall where half their company were still feasting with the people of Laketown. But Fili had had enough - in every sense. Now that he was out of that hubbub, his ears were buzzing slightly, the cool air of the night making him wonder just how much he'd had to drink in there. Not that the drinking had any bearing on the matter in hand, of course not. He'd been wronged and nobody understood him, least of all his uncle. He was going to his bed.

He couldn't remember what the quarrel had been about. Him and Kili, some teasing banter which had got out of hand, become angry words, so that Thorin had to step in. But Fili remembered all too clearly what Thorin had said to him, after, an arm about his shoulder as if he were dispensing fatherly advice instead of the cruellest blow Fili had suffered in his life.

"I expect more from you, Boy, because Kili is my nephew and I love him dearly. You are my Heir."

It was too much. Fili knew Thorin had always loved Kili best. Durin's Beard, who wouldn't? Everyone loved Kili, Fili most of all. But for his Uncle to tell him so to his face, to come right out and say that he viewed Kili as his beloved kin and Fili as... as a role? A political convenience ... And that only temporarily, since everyone knew Thorin would take a bride when he recaptured the Mountain, and get Heirs who were his sons rather than... Fili ground his teeth... nephews, acknowledged or not.

He swung to an abrupt halt in the middle of the bridge. It was an elaborate construction, this bridge. The parapet was covered in carvings of vines and flowers, and at intervals along it there were seats with prettily carved roofs where the people of Laketown could sit out of the elements to gossip or do business or simply watch the world go by. Here in the centre was a larger, more ornate shelter with intricately carved walls, very dark inside with the lanterns at either end of the bridge casting their striped shadows - and on a whim Fili stepped into it, leaning his elbows on the parapet as he gazed moodily down into the water and nursed his grievance.

He was turning to leave when Thorin stepped into the pool of light beneath one of the lanterns. Fili swore and shrank back into the darkness of his alcove, waiting til Thorin had crossed the bridge. He was in no mood to meet with his uncle just yet - and by the looks of things, Thorin would not welcome his company either. The dwarf leader already had someone with him, a red-headed someone in a flowered dress, who walked with her hand on Thorin's arm...

Bella? _Bella? _In a _dress ?_? Well, of course, Fili told himself logically, her own clothes were soaked. She must have borrowed it from a woman of Laketown. But that didn't explain why she had Thorin's fur-lined coat about her shoulders, or... Durin's Beard, his Uncle and Bella ?! Fili pressed himself further into the shadows and willed them to hurry past.

They didn't. Just outside Fili's shelter Bella too stopped and turned to look out over the lake. It was, as Fili himself had noted, a romantic bridge. There were stars in the September sky above them, and lanterns reflected in the dark water beneath. And Bella was wearing a dress. She had borrowed it not from a woman of Laketown but from the woman's half-grown daughter, because Bella, after all, was short. That meant the bodice was tight, and she was flushed and breathless, her eyes shining partly with beer and partly with the beginnings of what would later be a feverish cold. For the first time, too, Thorin noticed that the hair she had cropped off short - to disguise herself as a boy; Durin's Beard, how could be have _been_ so blind? - was beginning to grow back, tufty as a moulting pony. Thorin thought she looked adorable.

She was so utterly unlike any Dwarf woman he had ever known, so small and round, more so in some places than others thanks to the bodice, and laughing in delight because the night was so pretty... So Thorin did had what he wanted to do since The Carrock - since before The Carrock if he was honest - stepped up behind her, took one of those soft swellings of the Laketown dress in each of his large hands, and buried his face in her hair. Bella sighed.

Oh great. Fili could feel himself blushing furiously. Just great. He sank silently onto the bench, leaning back against the side of the alcove. If they found him he would just have to pretend to be asleep. He shut his eyes and immediately wished he'd been able to shut his ears as well, when his uncle did something which made the Hobbit squeal. Then giggle.

Fili, desperate now not to notice them, began racking his brains for what little he could remember of Balin's ancient history lessons, reciting the key dates of Dwarvish kings in his head back to Durin the Deathless... He still heard the seams rip.


	2. Chapter 2

Bella was flying, unable to believe this was happening as Thorin spun her round to face him, then crushed her beneath him on the parapet of the bridge. "Burglar - " he said thickly into the hollow of her neck, "Jewel - "

Oh how she'd _wanted _this - wanted it and known it would never happen. He hadn't even liked her all that much to begin with. And she was no Dwarf woman - how ugly she must seem to him, with her puny muscles and hairy feet. She didn't even have a beard ... But then again, Hobbit men didn't have beards either. Maybe she ought to have found _him_ ugly for not looking like one of them, and she didn't dislike his beard, neither the look of it nor the way it rasped along her collar-bone ... oh no, she most certainly didn't dislike that... and now he had a hand beneath the hem of her skirt, was actually lifting one of those self-same hairy feet and stroking it in a way which had her tangling her hands into his braids, dragging his head up to kiss her, drowning in swirls of lamp-lit water and Thorin...

"Not here," he said with difficulty, his voice sounding deeper than ever. He let her go and stood up, reaching for his coat. "Cover yourself. We'll go to my lodgings."

Oh yes, Fili prayed silently inside his alcove. Dear sweet Maker of All, _please _let them go to his lodgings...

"I want to see the stars through your hair," said Bella, causing Fili to actually squirm with embarrassment. It was such a very un-Baggins-like thing for her to have said.

Evidently Thorin thought so too, for he called her a word in Khuzdul which he would have boxed Fili's ears for using. He didn't sound all that displeased, though. "You can see the stars from my lodgings. You're my Queen, not some wench from a tavern to be tumbled in the street. Besides," he smirked, "I want to take my time."

The silence dragged out. Bella was staring at him with an expression not far removed from terror. "Your... Queen?" she whispered - and Thorin realised what he had said.

Curse! Would he never learn to guard his stupid mouth? He'd already alienated Fili this evening with something he'd said, and he still didn't really understand what. Now this. But it hadn't been an arrogant assumption on his part. He had been thinking... dreaming... about her in those terms for so many weeks now that the word had just slipped out. Well, he was a king and a battle commander, wasn't he?, and he could sieze an opportunity when it came. He hadn't meant to do it like this but -

"Yes, Mistress Baggins, my Queen." Thorin's knees thudded onto the hollow boards of the bridge. "Don't make me beg."

**Author's Note. **_Well folks, I wasn't at all happy with my original version of this chapter. I rushed the ending and felt that it showed, and I didn't like the abrupt change of pace and tone halfway through. So I decided to re-cast the thing as three chapters not two, even though that does makes this middle one rather short. Thank you for following and don't worry, Chapter 3 is coming... _


	3. Chapter 3

"I'm sorry Thorin. I can't marry you," Bella said quietly. "No - " She held up both hands to forestall him. "I want - that is, I wish - I mean, I would like to. Very much. Because you're wonderful. But... Oh dear." Her brow wrinkled. "Have you really thought about this?"

"Thoroughly," said Thorin, with his world charring once again into ash in the dragon fires all around him.

"Well, you see, the thing is... the thing is..."

Oh, but this was hard, far worse than spiders or trolls or even that creature Gollum. It was quite the cruellest and most difficult thing she'd ever had to do, or would do, if she lived to be eleventy-one - when all the time all she _wanted_ to do was fling herself squealing into his arms. Bella could feel the weight of it settling like a stone in her stomach, and she knew with absolute certainty that she would never love laughter or music or sunlight or joy again, if she said "No" to Thorin Oakenshield...

"You are a Dwarf, and I... am a Hobbit, and... I am quite well read, you know, in history, and... and genealogy, and I... I never heard of such a thing before. I'm sorry." She blushed becomingly, hitching in a forlorn manner at the low-cut neck of her dress. Goodness, he'd _torn_ it - and how ever was she going to explain that? "I mean, men and elves, yes. I think I'm right in saying Lord Elrond himself - "

_Elrond _?! Thorin realised he was growling. What in Durin's Name did that supercilious long streak have to do with anything?

Bella sighed. "What I am trying to tell you, Thorin, is that I do not know if I can give you heirs for the Mountain."

So that was it. Oh. For a moment Thorin felt stupid, then elated as it dawned on him that she wasn't rejecting him for his own sake. Then - and it was strange that he genuinely had not thought about this before, perhaps because in every way but one he was a father already, and had been for more than seventy years...

"By Durin," he said huskily, "I should like my children in that round little belly," and he leaned forward, still kneeling, and kissed it. The words far more than the gesture brought what was left of Bella's resolve crashing about her ears. Thorin nuzzled chastely, " - but because you are my woman, not because they would be heirs to the Mountain."

He smiled up at her, and what he saw came close to felling him. She was standing with her eyes screwed tight shut, one arm trembling as it supported her weight against the side of the bridge, the other fist thrust into her mouth to stifle the sudden sobs which racked her. Her face was a crumpled wall of tears.

Her distress struck Thorin like an axe blow. He had to force himself to his feet against the pain of it before he could gather her into his arms, and Bella tried one last time to be strong and fend him off, beating her little fists uselessly against his chest. Then she gave up and just clung.

"Oh, I should l-like that," she managed, "Oh Thorin, I should _like_ to be your wo- woman. But Ba- Balin said - " the rest was lost in a flood of fresh sobbing.

"Hush..." Thorin stroked her hair, not knowing whether to find Balin and throttle him - or leap in triumph onto the parapet yelling his battle cry to the skies because of what Bella herself had just said. "Burglar... Hush... " Soothing her as if she were a very small child or a pony, with the murmur of meaningless words and his strong, blacksmith's hands. In the end she was calmer. "There now. What did Balin say?"

"That you are the Heir of Durin. What that m-means to you all. Did you know, some of them b-believe you _are_ Durin? Well they do." Bella gave a sniff, a big one and rather dignified. "One day soon, Thorin Oakenshield, you are going to k-kill that dragon and re-take Erebor, and sit on the throne which was your grandfather's and should have been your father's - " Thorin gripped her tight; there was no denying how her utter confidence in him as to _that_ strengthened his blood... " - and then you have to m-marry a Dwarvish princess and rule your people and have p- pure blooded Dwarf princes to follow you as Kings Under the Mountain. I wo- won't let the Line of Durin be b-broken, Thorin, not for me..."

Oh my sweet, funny little Hobbit, that only came with us because of a song... How ever did you come to understand us Dwarves so completely? Because she was right, he thought with a snarl of irritation, his people were unlikely to accept anyone but a true Dwarf as their king. Not that it was an option in any case.

"Mistress Baggins," he said solemnly and with total honesty. "I swear if I ever had to choose - " _Mahal_ forbid, he added silently " - between you and the Mountain... my duty to my people and my ancestors..." he smiled then, trying to soften it, with that bittersweet smile which flipped her heart on all the rare occasions she had seen it, "- I would tip you over the battlements. But I do not want you as a breeder of princes, Burglar. I want _you_."

When they had kissed, long and sweet in the starlight, he said, "And the Line of Durin will not be broken. I already have an heir. I have Fili."

Fili himself was still lolled on his bench, to all outward appearances relaxed in sleep, while his insides shrivelled and writhed like dry leaves on a fire. Listening to them before had been merely embarrassing. This was excruciating. And the ancient kings were no help either, not when he heard his own name...

"I could not love that boy more if he were truly my own," his Uncle was saying. "Kili too, of course - our puppy that shoots like a veteran. But my golden Fili... " He paused, gazing out across the dark lake with Bella's raggedy-cropped head resting snugly beneath his chin, and he wondered how they had drifted into this and whether he should continue. Maybe he might still lose her, if he told her too much of the truth about his feelings for the boys - after all, nobody knew for certain that he and Bella could not have sons of their own, and women could be funny about things like that.

But this was his Burglar who would understand, and he owed her his honesty. Besides, in the backwash of so many churning emotions and his earlier quarrel with Fili, Thorin found that for once he wanted to talk.

"Yes?" Bella prompted softly, snuffling only a very little. She could sense the change in him and was entranced - she had never heard Thorin speak like this.

"Their father was one of the finest dwarves I ever knew," he told her. "They called him The Lion. In jest because of his hair, in truth because of his heart. Do you know what a lion is, Burglar?"

"A leg- leg- legendary beast?" said Bella.

"A legendary beast." It was an apt description. "If you had seen Floi in battle, you would know how such legends begin."

"What happened to him?" Bella could guess the answer. The tug on her scalp as Thorin's fingers tightened convulsively in her hair confirmed it.

"Goblins," he said.

**Author's Note:** _And I know I said it would be three chapters. I lied._


	4. Chapter 4

"Fili..."

Thorin flung himself to the ground beside his wounded kinsman, his heart thudding. This was his fault - he had led them into an ambush, and now the snow of the high pass was splattered with dark goblin blood; he could hear the last of them wailing in terror as they fled from Dwalin's axe, back into the rocks from which they had come. A worthless victory in a skirmish which should never have needed to be fought, bought at a price beyond counting. The young dwarf's shoulders wrestled the ground. His once-golden plaits, darkened with sweat, clung to a face drained pale and ugly with pain.

"Thorin? "

"Save your strength," Thorin told him, knowing as he said it that there was nothing left to save, that no dwarf could survive that gaping wound, and blessed Durin, _what_ was he going to say to Dis?

"Fili - my son - " Floi's voice was becoming shrill, each word forced from him, and Thorin gripped his hand. A strong hand, calloused with long hours of wielding his twin swords: Thorin would have bruises for a week. "I want - Fili to have my swords. Train him well."

"I will."

"...and Dis - and the baby... Yours to protect, now - Brother - "

"As my own," Thorin promised.

"Loved her." The last word was a scream, and there was nothing Thorin could do to help as his friend and brother-in-law tried feebly to arch and twist himself away from the pain. He couldn't manage it of course, not when he was cut all but in two, with blood and worse than blood steaming in the cold air. "Hurts - " Floi moaned then, and Thorin had been wrong, because there was one thing he could do after all. And only one. He held Floi's wild eyes steadily with his own and fumbled for his dagger -

He was saved by the arrival of Dwalin. Taking in the situation at a glance, the big Dwarf shouldered Thorin gently aside and with a merciful matter-of-factness slid his own knife very efficiently between their injured comrade's ribs. Thorin had time to see the relief drain into Floi's pale face before it emptied completely.

Then Balin's hand was on his elbow, not quite assisting him to rise. "That's for the best, laddie," the older Dwarf nodded towards Dwalin soberly cleaning his knife. "No need to add to your poor sister's grief. She'll be needing you by her, and her with two bairns now. She'll be thankful it was done, but it's just as well it was not you that did it."

And Thorin had nodded and left it at that, knowing all the time that it had been him who did it. Because he was the captain and he had taken the wrong path, and because of that The Lion was dead.

To the Hobbit, now, he said only, "He fell. My sister was carrying Kili at the time. I think the shock almost killed her."

It was he who had broken the news to Dis, and he who had caught her and carried her to her chamber while the women clucked around them like stupid, jostling hens. And she had birthed Kili in hope and grief over two days. Uncle Thorin's had been the first male hands to hold Kili, two darkling Longbeard princes together - one nervous as hell and the other asleep - while Dis's tired smile warmed them both, although she was crying at the same time. "He's an ugly little scrap. He looks like _you_."

But Fili was another matter altogether.

"I found him in the forge." His forge, of all places. Nearly eighty years later and Thorin was still completely bewildered by that. And half his extended family there with him apparently: Balin, who might have suceeded if he had been alone, Gloin's young wife Niris and several others, all of them trying to pet Fili and comfort him - and in the middle of it all the taut, distant figure of Fili himself, shrugging them off and putting his chin in the air. When he saw Thorin he had run to him on toddling legs and flung his arms about his knees.

"I expected him to fear me," Thorin said. "Young dwarves often do."

Only the young ones? wondered Bella. But she was seeing a different side of him tonight, wasn't she just? So she stood very quiet and held him, her strong Dwarf who had so many hidden facets like a dark jewel beneath the steel and mithril armour he wore against the past.

"I held him, and he said -" Thorin chuckled indulgently, in spite of everything. "He _glared_ at Balin and he said, 'Uncle Thorin will let me vengle him.' Vengle. He couldn't say Avenge."

"And did he?" Bella stroked his face. "Did he vengle the Lion?"

_Mahal_, how did she do that? Thorin remembered that night in the Weathertop Hills - how many moons ago was it now? - when Balin had spoken of Azanulbilar, and Bella, "Bilbo" as he had thought she was then, had asked straight out what became of the Pale Orc. It was as if she could hear any story and fasten immediately onto the one part of it which mattered most to Thorin. For how could he even speak of revenge to Fili when it was his fault his father had died?

He remembered how they had knelt there on the floor of the forge amidst the thorns of half-made weapons, with Fili at last howling heathily in his arms, and Thorin himself beyond devastated because out of everyone in the room, Fili had run to _him_.

_And I killed his Da._

"Thorin." He had looked up to see Balin watching him sadly. "Don't do this to yourself, Lad. Bad things come. They aren't all your fault. And not even you can always prevent them. All you can do is try to make things as right as they can be, afterwards."

"One pack of goblins looks much like another, " he said evasively, now, to Bella. "We'd already killed most of them. But - I swore then, I would _never_ let anything hurt him again... I would take every arrow for him..."

In the shadow of his alcove, Fili was shaking, and it shamed him. It wasn't the recital of his father's death - he had heard that story before, including, once he was old enough, all the details which he noticed his uncle hadn't told the hobbit. And he'd heard that damned Vengle thing til he was sick of it. But Thorin's voice when he spoke of himself, of Fili - Fili bit his lip.

"You can't, of course," that deep voice was continuing. "You have to let them stand. To fall if they are going to. You have to let them fight -" There it was again, that edge of amused pride. " And by Durin, that boy can fight. I... I do not have the words to tell of my pride in him."

"You speak of him the way a man speaks of a son," Bella whispered.

"Of an heir," Thorin agreed. "Yes. I am sorry if this offends you - "

"Never."

"- but it is something you must know. On the day he turns one hundred I will proclaim Fili Lion-cub to be my Heir to the Kingdom Under the Mountain. He knows this. Even if he did not, I would not go back on that decision now, because Fili will be the finest king my people could have... and I love him. I will not disinherit him for your children."

Durin's beard, that had sounded harsher than he meant it. He had only wanted to be fair to her; and now he had lost her for certain. And the sure knowledge that Fili was worth it was a bitter comfort when his Burglar looked up at him like that... all dishevelled and blotchy from having cried earlier, crinkling her brow so adorably in that way she had when she was puzzled, cupping the side of his face in her hand and stroking his moustache with her thumb... Oh.

"I love you, Thorin Oakenshield," said Bella.

... What had they been talking about? Fili? _Seriously?_ Why in Durin's name were they talking about his _boys_ at a time like this? Thorin turned his face into the caress and nibbled her palm, and when Bella's breath caught in her throat he not only stopped thinking about Fili, he stopped thinking at all - surfacing only several minutes later when Bella sneezed.

"Oh, I'm sorry - Thorin, I'm so sorry!" She was giggling but her eyes were smoky. "I do think - I think going back to your lodgings would be - really - a very, _very _good idea..." And when he chuckled and growled into her ear the same Khuzdul word which had shocked Fili earlier, "Yes, thank you, I _can_ work out what that means, you know."

Thorin draped his coat about her shoulders, not without a stroke and a squeeze as he did so, and bent to breathe a kiss into the base of her throat, and stood back to admire her. His smile faded and after a few seconds Bella began to find the intensity unnerving. At last he said something else in Khuzdul, something which sounded quite different, and she peered at him with suspicion. She had no idea what _that _one could be.

"Wife," Thorin told her. His voice was rough suddenly with an emotion a stranger might have taken for anger, but which fooled Bella not at all. "It means Wife, Mistress Baggins. It appears I am begging after all."

"No," said Bella. "I mean yes - I mean no, don't beg, but yes. I mean yes. Oh Thorin. Just yes."

Fili heard none of it. _You are my Heir._ Later, he would feel foolish, even ashamed, that he had never understood the layers of meaning his Uncle placed upon that word. He would certainly feel guilty for storming out like that in such a smouldering Longbeard temper. For now there no space inside him for any emotion but one. _You speak of him the way a man speaks of a son_.

And Fili sat for a long time in the darkness after his Uncle and the Hobbit had left, with an irrepressible grin on his face, and the corners of his blue eyes dimpled with tears.


End file.
